06/20/2005

Kids Can Learn to Read and Shoot Cops

This Gamespot news story piqued my attention. Not because of the usual argument over video games and their impact on the minds of children. I've been hearing that argument since I was a kid. I remember Mortal Monday, when the first Mortal Kombat was released for consoles. I was in the fifth grade if I remember correctly. Everyone was abuzz with excitement. Since I didn't own a Super Nintendo or a Genesis at that point, I used some left-over birthday money to buy that sucker for the original Game Boy. Good times. And nary a dead body in sight.

Anyway.

The quote that really got my attention was Senator Charles E. Schumer saying, "Little Johnny should be learning how to read, not how to kill cops."

Ignoring the fact that 25 to Life is obviously an adult-oriented game, and further ignoring the irony that Eidos executives must be jumping up and down in joy after the 6 o'clock news publicity Schumer has brought their game, I have to wonder at the wider assessment of video games that Schumer appears to be making. By comparing the actions in a video game against learning how to read, Schumer portrays video games as products devoid of any educational value. Which, to a guy who grew up with video games, is an even more troubling implication than the idea that crazy kids might copy what they see in games the same way crazy kids have copied everything for years.

And the more I think about it, the more I realize what video games did teach me.

This even goes beyond the Everything Bad is Good for You argument that the compexity of games help complex thought and strategic planning. I mean basic skills and concepts. I still believe that the early King's Quest and Zork games taught me to read and write, eventually leading me to become the English & American Literature major I am today. The Final Fantasy games proved so frustratingly esoteric to the prepubescent Mike that I taught myself the ins and outs of computers and networking just so I could find walkthroughs on the Internet, skills that later proved useful on a resume. Games such as Mario Paint taught me how to express myself and create video art long before I could take classes in Photoshop and Flash.

"Pish-pash," you say. "These are skills that were complemented by games, not fostered by them."

Really? If you grew up with games like me, try to think of all the various words and skills that you have learned due to the presence of electronic entertainment in your life.

"Fatality" is an obvious, if not somewhat self-defeating in this circumstance, word that comes to mind. Tiger portable games were teaching me what a Liquid Crystal Display was before it became common knowledge in the consumer market. Most gamers were well ahead of the curve as far as understanding computers and their various components. Hell, I know folks that learned Japanese just so they could import RPGs. If that's not devotion to self-education, I don't know what is.

And speaking of RPGs, I grew up with a complex mish-mash of Eastern and Western mythology in all those summon spells and monsters that are litered throughout those games. Couldn't you argue that they promote a background knowledge in classical literature? The original Doom represented various sci-fi renditions of classical demons and monsters. That's worth something.

Hell, even the recent Grand Theft Auto games reference political events and concepts of the time-frame they are set. Placing the recent San Andreas during the early 90s during the L.A. riots makes it socially significant beyond a secret sex code (thanks Kotaku). I would think that, if the game really gets a young, innocent, prelapserian child interested, then it also makes that child investigate the world of the game further. They might learn something about recent American history.

But maybe this is just me. Am I wrong? As a curious, unofficial poll, what new SAT words or useful skills did video games teach you folks? Have games taught you anything that makes you feel smarter or a better person? Any Trivial Pursuit questions answered correctly because of video games? To paraphrase Senator Schumer, can Johnny learn to read while shooting cops?

Comments

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I think the most basic skill I've learned is exploring my environment. In many games, that's all you do. The whole game is exploring and figuring out which items in the environment are meaningful and useful and which are not, as well as which direction you're supposed to be going. Like I said, basic, but we're talking impressionable kids here. Say a kid gets separated from his parents while on vacation. Which one do you think has the best chance of finding his way back to his hotel or to someone who can help him find his parents, one who has played all three GTA games inside and out, or one who has never played a game in his life?

Something like Warioware Inc. is another example. The whole point of the game is figuring out what you're supposed to do in some nearly random task. I can't believe people don't stress the educational value of something like this more often. This is critical thinking and problem solving at its core. Warioware should be mandatory for kids age five to twelve.

I learned a lot more from paper role playing games than any of my video games. Some games, like OGRE, probably helped me form some better logical skills, but I don't think I'm any more political aware for having finished San Andreas - nor do I think the haphazard grammar of adventure games helped me in lit classes.

D&D on the other hand. Well, I still remember to this day asking my Oriental History teacher that if the masterless samurai of which he referred were called ronin, a fact I had learned while researching for a new campaign a few months earlier. I learned more about mythology and even about certain religions from Dieties and Demigods than Bullfinch's.

Maggie over at our site, The Game Chair, talked about this very thing here, but I'm not sure I buy the whole enchilda myself. I grew up on video games, including text adventures, but I'm not sure they added anything to my education. Certainly it was vastly eclipsed by the fact that I was a voracious reader. Especially nowadays, because there isn't much reading at all in any video game. The closest you come is to turn on the subtitles. Then again, most of the writing in video games is so juvenile, it would be like never advancing beyond The Hardy Boys when I was growing up.

There's some problem solving in some games, but again, I don't think it transfers very well to "real life". And it is such a minor point to most games, where it is important to move fast and shoot even faster, again I worry about it getting lost in the noise.

But I do think I'm going to be paying more attention as I play, to see what it migh in fact offer to my daughters, or even myself.

> what new SAT words or useful skills did video games teach you folks? Have games taught you anything that makes you feel smarter or a better person?

Video games single handedly got me interested in computing. Computing got me interested in programming. Programming got me interested in the web and game design. The web got me interested in general design and art history and self-publishing and, hence, more reading and writing. These are the things I studied in university (during my short time there). These are the things that got me *into* university.